The Kommandant, standing with two of his officers by the broken statue of Mayor Leclerc, was the first to see him. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. The young man ran faster, his oversized shoes slipping from his feet. ‘HALT!’

The prisoner dropped his backpack and appeared briefly to pick up speed. He stumbled as he lost his second shoe, but somehow righted himself. He was about to disappear around the corner. The Kommandant whipped a pistol from his jacket. Almost before I had registered what he was doing, he lifted his arm, aimed and fired. The boy went down with an audible crack.

The world stopped. The birds fell silent. We stared at the motionless body on the cobbles and Hélène let out a low moan. She made as if to go to him, but the Kommandant ordered us all to stay back. He shouted something in German, and his men raised their rifles, pointing them at the remaining prisoners.

Nobody moved. The captives stared at the ground. They seemed unsurprised by this turn of events. Hélène’s hands had gone to her mouth, and she trembled, muttering something I could not hear. I slid my arm around her waist. I could hear my own ragged breathing.

The Kommandant walked briskly away from us towards the prisoner. When he reached him, he dropped to his haunches, and pressed his fingers to the young man’s jaw. A dark red puddle already stained his threadbare jacket, and I could see his eyes, staring blankly across the square. The Kommandant squatted there for a minute, then stood again. Two German officers moved towards him, but he motioned them into formation. He walked back across the square, tucking his pistol into his jacket. He stopped briefly when he passed in front of the mayor.

‘You will make the necessary arrangements,’ he said.

The mayor nodded. I saw the faint tic to his jaw.

With a shout, the column moved on up the road, the prisoners with their heads bowed, the women of St Péronne now weeping openly into their handkerchiefs. The body lay in a crumpled heap a short distance across from rue des Bastides.

Less than a minute after the Germans had marched away, René Grenier’s clock chimed a mournful quarter past the hour into the silence.

That night the mood in Le Coq Rouge was sober. The Kommandant did not attempt to make conversation; neither did I give the slightest impression that I wished for it. Hélène and I served the meal, washed the cooking pots, and remained in the kitchen as far as we could. I had no appetite. I could not escape the image of that poor young man, his ragged clothes flying out behind him, his oversized shoes falling from his feet as he fled to his death.

More than that, I could not believe that the officer who had whipped out his pistol and shot him so pitilessly was the same man who had sat at my tables, looking wistful about the child he had not seen, exclaiming about the art that he had. I felt foolish, as if the Kommandant had concealed his true self. This was what the Germans were here for, not discussions about art and delicious food. They were here to shoot our sons and husbands. They were here to destroy us.

I missed my husband at that moment with a physical pain. It was now nearly three months since I had last received word from him. I had no idea of what he endured. While we existed in this strange bubble of isolation, I could convince myself that he was fine and robust, that he was out there in the real world, sharing a flask of cognac with his comrades, or perhaps sketching on a scrap of paper in some idle hours. When I closed my eyes I saw the Édouard I remembered from Paris. But seeing those pitiful Frenchmen marched through the streets made it harder for me to hold on to my fantasy. Édouard might be captured, injured, starving. He might be suffering as those men suffered. He might be dead.

I leaned on the sink and closed my eyes.

At that moment I heard the crash. Jerked away from my thoughts, I ran out of the kitchen. Hélène stood with her back to me, her hands raised, a tray of broken glasses at her feet. Against the wall, the Kommandant had a young man by the throat. He was shouting something at him in German, his face contorted, inches from the man’s own. His victim’s hands were up in a gesture of submission.

‘Hélène?’

She was ashen. ‘He put his hand on me as I went past. But … but Herr Kommandant has gone mad.’

The other men were around them now, pleading with the Kommandant, trying to pull him off, their chairs overturning, shouting over each other in an attempt to be heard. The whole place was briefly in uproar. Eventually the Kommandant seemed to hear them and loosened his grip on the younger man’s throat. I thought his eyes met mine, briefly, but then, as he took a step back, his fist shot out and he punched the man hard in the side of the head, so that his face ricocheted off the wall. ‘Sie können nicht berühren die Frauen,’ he yelled.

‘The kitchen.’ I pushed my sister towards the door, not even stopping to scoop up the broken glass. I heard the raised voices, the slam of a door, and I hurried after her down the hallway.

‘Madame Lefèvre.’

I was washing the last of the glasses. Hélène had gone to bed; the day’s events had exhausted her even more than they had me.

‘Madame?’

‘Herr Kommandant.’ I turned to him, drying my hands on the cloth. We were down to one candle in the kitchen, a wick set in some fat in a sardine tin; I could barely make out his face.

He stood in front of me, his cap in his hands. ‘I’m sorry about your glasses. I will make sure they are replaced.’

‘Please don’t bother. We have enough to get by.’ I knew any glasses would simply be requisitioned from my neighbours.